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A bridge too far

February 27 2012, 12:01am, The Times

Itchen Bridge

When Slovakia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs opened a new cycling bridge (above) as a “symbol of successful advancement of friendly and close neighbourly relations between Slovakia and Austria”, he couldn’t have predicted that people would start voting to name it in honour of Chuck Norris, action hero and creator of the martial art Chun Kuk Do. Then again, perhaps he could have: it’s not the first time that an online public poll soliciting names for a bridge has been hijacked by fans of the star of such memorable box office hits as Karate Kommandos, Silent Rage and Slaughter in San Francisco.

In 2006, the Hungarian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Transport was also caught out in its poll to name what was then the snappily…